The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people
#33051
Robert D. Manning
#33063
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Robert D. Manning is a former financial advisor in consumer credit and financial services. Up until 2008, Manning was a professor of finance at Rochester Institute of Technology's E. Philip Saunders College of Business.
Go to Profile#33052
Roberto Cipriani
#33064
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Roberto Cipriani is an Italian social scientist. He is professor emeritus of sociology at Roma Tre University. "He has written extensively on popular religion, the sacred and secularization", and is known for his unconventional applications of the "concept of 'diffused religion' and then that of 'religion of values' ". He has made analytical contributions to the concept of diffused religion by using grounded theory. "He also underlines what he calls the 'meta-institutional' character of this religion, even if, he says, these characteristics have a religious institutional origin".
Go to Profile#33053
Bian Zhilin
#33065
Overall Influence
1910 - 2000 (90 years)
Bian Zhilin was a 20th-century Chinese poet, translator and literature researcher. Bian was born in Haimen, Jiangsu on December 8, 1910, and liked to read classical and modern Chinese poems when he was very young. In 1929, he entered the English department of Beijing University to study. During this time he was greatly influenced by the English romantic poems and French symbolic poems, and began to write poems by himself. The poetry anthology The Han Garden Collection co-written by Bian, Li Guangtian and He Qifang, was published in 1936.
Go to Profile#33054
Pat Eddery
#33066
Overall Influence
1952 - 2015 (63 years)
Patrick James John Eddery was an Irish flat racing jockey and trainer. He rode three winners of the Derby and was Champion Jockey on eleven occasions. He rode the winners of 4,632 British flat races, a figure exceeded only by Sir Gordon Richards.
Go to Profile#33055
Robin Murray
#33067
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Sir Robin MacGregor Murray FRS is a Scottish psychiatrist, Professor of Psychiatric Research at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London. He has treated patients with schizophrenia and bipolar illness referred to the National Psychosis Unit of the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust because they fail to respond to treatment, or cannot get appropriate treatment, locally; he sees patients privately if they are unable to obtain an NHS referral.
Go to Profile#33056
Charles Wright Mills
#33068
Overall Influence
#33057
Eliseo Vivas
#33069
Overall Influence
1901 - 1993 (92 years)
Eliseo Vivas was a 20th-century philosopher and literary theorist. As a child, his family fled Colombia in response to the presidency of Cipriano Castro. They went to Curacao, then Paris, then, in 1915, to New York City. Vivas served as the Venezuelan consul in Philadelphia, then turned to academia studying or teaching at, among other schools, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Chicago, Ohio State University, Northwestern University, Rockford College, and the University of Iowa.
Go to Profile#33058
Jan Lexell
#33070
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Jan Lexell is a Swedish physician and academic, who is a specialist in rehabilitation medicine and neurology. He is head of the rehabilitation medicine research group in the Department of Health Sciences at Lund University, Lund. One of his research areas is the effect of physical activity on the aging process. Lexell is also senior consultant in the Department of Neurology and Rehabilitation Medicine at Skane University Hospital, Lund. Lexell's research is frequently cited; in particular, his work during the 1980s on examining the vastus lateralis muscle immediately post-mortem, which helped...
Go to Profile#33059
Robert Williams
#33071
Overall Influence
1926 - 2015 (89 years)
Robert Joseph Paton Williams was an English chemist, an Emeritus Fellow at Wadham College, Oxford and an Emeritus Professor at the University of Oxford. Education and early life Robert Joseph Paton Williams was born on 25 February 1926 in Wallasey to Ernest Ivor Williams, a customs and excise officer at Liverpool, and Alice Williams , a milliner; he was the second of four children.
Go to Profile#33060
Sílvio Meira
#33072
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Sílvio Romero de Lemos Meira is a Brazilian computer scientist, professor and entrepreneur in the area of software engineering and innovation. Currently, he is an emeritus professor at the Centre of Informatics of the Federal University of Pernambuco. Additionally, he also is the chairman of the Porto Digital - the biggest Brazilian tech park - and is member of the board of directors in several companies. Meira is also founder and chief scientist at tds.company.
Go to Profile#33061
David James Skellern
#33073
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
David Skellern is an Australian electronic engineer and computer scientist credited, along with colleagues, for the first chip-set implementation of the IEEE 802.11a wireless networking standard. He is credited with a number of important technology innovations. developed with colleagues which include John O'Sullivan, Terence Percival and Neil Weste, and in particular the first chip-set implementation of the IEEE 802.11a wireless networking standard. This innovation has been described as a revolution in world communications, allowing high speed wireless communications.
Go to Profile#33062
Akiho Miyashiro
#33074
Overall Influence
1920 - 2008 (88 years)
Akiho Miyashiro was a Japanese geologist. Career Miyashiro was known for his contributions to metamorphic and igneous petrology. He also made contributions to the study of tectonics and meteorites. In the 1960s he introduced the concept of paired metamorphic belts. In 1973 Miyashiro challenged the common conceptions of ophiolites and proposed an island arc origin for the famous Troodos Ophiolite in Cyprus. This was done arguing that numerous lavas and dykes in the ophiolite had calc-alkaline chemistries.
Go to Profile#33063
Liv Tyler
#33075
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Liv Rundgren Tyler is an American actress. She began a modeling career at age 14 before making her film debut in Silent Fall ; she went on to achieve critical recognition with starring roles in Heavy and Empire Records , as well as That Thing You Do! and Stealing Beauty . She then appeared in films such as Inventing the Abbotts , Armageddon , Cookie's Fortune and Onegin , Dr. T & the Women , and One Night at McCool's . She then played the elf Arwen Undómiel in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy , which became one of the highest-grossing film series in history.
Go to Profile#33064
Jan Hendrik Schön
#33076
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
#33065
Mary Beth Tinker
#33077
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Mary Beth Tinker is an American free speech activist known for her role in the 1969 Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District Supreme Court case, which ruled that Warren Harding Junior High School could not punish her for wearing a black armband in school in support of a truce in the Vietnam War. The case set a precedent for student speech in schools.
Go to Profile#33066
Peter Høj
#33078
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Peter Bordier Høj is a Danish-Australian academic and Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Adelaide. He has previously served as Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Queensland and the University of South Australia. Educated at the University of Copenhagen, Høj completed a Bachelor of Science where he majored in biochemistry and chemistry, a Master of Science in biochemistry and genetics and a Doctor of Philosophy in Photosynthesis. He has worked in Denmark and Australia as a researcher and published multiple scientific articles. Høj has also served on a number o...
Go to Profile#33067
Chitranjan Singh Ranawat
#33079
Overall Influence
Chitranjan Singh Ranawat is an American orthopedic surgeon of Indian origin. Ranawat was born in Sarwania, in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh and did his early medical education at Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Medical College, Indore and his schooling from The Daly College, Indore before moving to the US for advanced training. There, he worked at St. Peters Hospital, Albany and Albany Medical Center and received certification as an orthopedic surgeon by the American Board of Orthopedic Surgery in 1969. Later, he moved to Lenox Hill Hospital where he became the chairman and director of the Orthopedic department.
Go to Profile#33068
Janet E. Mertz
#33080
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Janet E. Mertz is an American biochemist, molecular biologist, and cancer researcher. She is currently the Elizabeth McCoy Professor of Oncology in the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Mertz is best known for disputing Lawrence Summers' 2005 suggestion that women lack the intrinsic aptitude to excel in mathematics at the highest level and for discovering an easy method for joining DNAs from different species. This latter finding initiated the era of genetic engineering whose ramifications form the basis of modern genetics and the biotechnology in...
Go to Profile#33069
Josefina Muriel
#33081
Overall Influence
1918 - 2008 (90 years)
Josefina Muriel de la Torre was a Mexican writer, historian, researcher, bibliophile, and academic. She specialized in the history of the feminine and religious world of the time of New Spain. She was awarded the Order of Isabella the Catholic by the government of Spain in 1966.
Go to Profile#33070
Denis Cosgrove
#33082
Overall Influence
1948 - 2008 (60 years)
Denis Edmund Cosgrove was a British cultural geographer. He taught at Oxford Polytechnic, Loughborough University, Royal Holloway, University of London, where he rose to become dean of the graduate school, and finally at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1998, he received the prestigious Back Award from the Royal Geographical Society.
Go to Profile#33071
Russ Shafer-Landau
#33083
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Russ Shafer-Landau is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Education and career Shafer-Landau is a graduate of Brown University and completed his PhD work at the University of Arizona under the supervision of Joel Feinberg. He has been teaching philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison from 2002, where he became chair of the department. From 1992 to 2002 Shafer-Landau taught at the University of Kansas.
Go to Profile#33072
Tony Rothman
#33084
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Tony Rothman is an American theoretical physicist, academic and writer. Early life Tony is the son of physicist and science fiction writer Milton A. Rothman and psychotherapist Doris W. Rothman. He holds a B.A. from Swarthmore College, and a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin , where he studied at the Center for Relativity under the supervision of its long-time director Richard Matzner. He continued on post-doctoral fellowships at Oxford, Moscow State University and the University of Cape Town.
Go to Profile#33073
Ruth W. Nduati
#33085
Overall Influence
Karithi Ruth Wanjiru Nduati is a Kenyan Pediatrician and Epidemiologist who also teaches at the University of Nairobi College of Health Sciences. She is also currently leading an interdisciplinary program through the University of Nairobi School of Medicine to educate physician-researchers to best implement HIV treatment and prevention methods backed by research. The program was funded by the Fogarty Training Grant which is a part of the PEPFAR funds the country of Kenya received.
Go to Profile#33074
Emmanuel Giroux
#33086
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Emmanuel Giroux is a blind French geometer known for his research on contact geometry and open book decompositions. Education and career Giroux has Marfan syndrome, because of which he became blind at the age of 11. He earned a doctorate from the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon in 1991 under the supervision of François Laudenbach.
Go to Profile#33075
Manizha Bakhtari
#33087
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Manizha Bakhtari is an Afghan diplomat, author, and journalist. She currently serves as the Afghan ambassador to Austria. She was the former Afghan ambassador to the Nordic countries . Bakhtari previously served as the Chief of Staff of the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and as a part-time lecturer at Kabul University.
Go to Profile#33076
Larry Faulkner
#33088
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Larry Ray Faulkner is an American academic and businessman. He served as the twenty-seventh president of The University of Texas at Austin from 1998 to 2006, and as the president of the Houston Endowment Inc. from 2006 to 2012.
Go to Profile#33077
David N. Weil
#33089
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
David Nathan Weil is the James and Merryl Tisch Professor of Economics at Brown University. Weil's scholarship has focused on economic growth and demographic economics. Between 2015 and 2018, Weil chaired Brown's Department of Economics.
Go to Profile#33078
Will Jennings
#33090
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Wilbur H. Jennings is an American lyricist. He is popularly known for writing the lyrics for the songs "Tears in Heaven" and "My Heart Will Go On". He has been inducted into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame and has won several awards including three Grammy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and two Academy Awards.
Go to Profile#33079
Valentin Pokrovsky
#33091
Overall Influence
1929 - 2020 (91 years)
Valentin Ivanovich Pokrovsky was a Russian medical scientist, epidemiologist and infectionist. Career President of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences from 1987 to 2006, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences , Director of the Central Research Institute of Epidemiology under the Ministry of Healthcare of the Russian Federation, Professor at the I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University, Doctor of Medical Sciences .
Go to Profile#33080
John Prausnitz
#33092
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
John Michael Prausnitz is a professor of chemical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, a position he has held since 1955. Prausnitz is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to the thermodynamics of phase equilibria and its application to industrial process design. In 2003, he received the National Medal of Science for his work in molecular thermodynamics. He is responsible for many of the activity coefficient models used for the design of major chemical plants.
Go to Profile#33081
M. M. Ayoub
#33093
Overall Influence
M. M. Ayoub is an Egyptian retired P.W. Horn Professor of Industrial Engineering at Texas Tech University. He is a pioneer in the field of ergonomics, specifically relating to the application of mechanics to manual material handling.
Go to Profile#33082
John Sturges
#33094
Overall Influence
1910 - 1992 (82 years)
John Eliot Sturges was an American film director. His films include Bad Day at Black Rock , Gunfight at the O.K. Corral , The Magnificent Seven , The Great Escape , and Ice Station Zebra . In 2013, The Magnificent Seven and 2018, Bad Day at Black Rock were selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Go to Profile#33083
Peeter Järvelaid
#33095
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Peeter Järvelaid is an Estonian legal scholar and historian. Järvelaid is a professor in the University of Tallinn. He has developed semiotic and personality-centered research direction, writing hundreds of articles mostly about the European and Estonian legal history and education, published in Estonian, English, German, French, Russian, Latvian, Finnish, Lithuanian and Swedish. Since 2006 his studies have been increasingly concentrated on the international relations in the 20th century, which among others has required intensive archival researches in German and Polish archives. Since 2012 J...
Go to Profile#33084
Svetlana Sorokina
#33096
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Svetlana Innokentyevna Sorokina is a Russian journalist, member of the , teacher at the Higher School of Economics, and a former member of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights .
Go to Profile#33085
Leonard Uhr
#33097
Overall Influence
1927 - 2000 (73 years)
Leonard Uhr was an American computer scientist and a pioneer in computer vision, pattern recognition, machine learning and cognitive science. He was an expert in many aspects of human neurophysiology and perception, and a central theme of his research was to design artificial intelligence systems based on his understanding of how the human brain works. He was one of the early proponents of incorporation into artificial intelligence algorithms of methods for dealing with uncertainty.
Go to Profile#33086
Diego Milito
#33098
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Diego Alberto Milito is an Argentine former professional footballer who played as a striker. He is currently a sports manager. Milito began his club career in Argentina with Racing Club in 1999, and later moved to Italian side Genoa in 2003. In 2005, he was acquired by Spanish club Real Zaragoza, where he remained for three seasons, before returning to Genoa in 2008. His prolific goalscoring exploits during his second spell with Genoa earned him a move to defending Serie A champions Inter Milan, where he was pivotal in the club's 2010 treble-winning season, scoring 30 goals in all competitions, including two goals in the 2010 UEFA Champions League Final.
Go to Profile#33087
Konrad Repgen
#33099
Overall Influence
1923 - 2017 (94 years)
Konrad Repgen was a German historian and a professor emeritus at the University of Bonn. He was revered for his work on contemporary church history. Life Konrad Repgen was born in 1923 at Friedrich-Wilhelms-Hütte, part of the conurbation of Troisdorf a short distance to the south-east of Cologne. His father was a teacher and an active member of the Catholic Centre Party. In January 1933, a régime change heralded a rapid switch to single-party government, and Repgen's father, identified as an activist member of one of the "wrong" parties, lost his teaching job the same year.
Go to Profile#33088
Richard D. Schafer
#33100
Overall Influence
1918 - 2014 (96 years)
Richard Donald Schafer was an American mathematician. Richard Schafer studied at the University at Buffalo, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1938 and his master's degree in 1940. He received in 1942 from the University of Chicago his PhD under Abraham Adrian Albert with dissertation Alternative Algebras over an Arbitrary Field. After service in the U.S. Naval Reserve from 1942 to 1945, he was an instructor at the University of Michigan for the academic year 1945–1946. From 1946 to 1948 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study. From 1948 to 1953 he was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#33089
Jo Bailey Wells
#33101
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Joanne Caladine Bailey Wells is a British Anglican bishop, theologian, and academic. Since January 2023, she has served at the Anglican Communion Office in London as "Bishop for Episcopal Ministry". Previously, she was a lecturer in the Old Testament and biblical theology at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, and then associate professor of Bible and Ministry at Duke Divinity School, Duke University, North Carolina; From 2013 until 2016, she had served as Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury; she was then Bishop of Dorking, a suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Guildford, 2016–2023.
Go to Profile#33090
Vic Tandy
#33102
Overall Influence
1955 - 2005 (50 years)
Vic Tandy was a British lecturer for information technology at Coventry University, England, and an engineer. He was known best for his research into the relationship between infrasound and ghostly apparitions.
Go to Profile#33091
Martin Birch
#33103
Overall Influence
1948 - 2020 (72 years)
Martin Birch was a British music producer and sound engineer. He became renowned for engineering and producing albums recorded predominantly by British rock bands, including Deep Purple, Rainbow, Fleetwood Mac, Whitesnake, Black Sabbath, and Iron Maiden.
Go to Profile#33092
Rebecca Oppenheimer
#33104
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Rebecca Oppenheimer is an American astrophysicist and one of four curator/professors in the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Oppenheimer is a comparative exoplanetary scientist. She investigates planets orbiting stars other than the Sun. Her optics laboratory is the birthplace of a number of new astronomical instruments designed to tackle the problem of directly seeing and taking spectra of nearby solar systems with exoplanets and studying their composition, with the ultimate goal of finding life outside the solar system.
Go to Profile#33093
Ignatios Antoniadis
#33105
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Ignatios Antoniadis is a Greek theoretical physicist, specializing in string theory and particle physics. Education and career Antoniadis received in 1977 a degree in mathematics from the University of Athens and in 1978 a Diplôme d'études approfondies in theoretical physics from Pierre and Marie Curie University. He received in 1980 his Thèse de troisème cycle from the École normale supérieure and in 1983 his Thèse d'État from the École polytechnique. At Centre national de la recherche scientifique , he was from 1982 to 1986 an attaché de recherche at the Centre de physique théorique o...
Go to Profile#33094
Richard Carwardine
#33106
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Richard John Carwardine is a Welsh historian and academic. He specialises in American politics and religion in the era of the American Civil War. The professor is best known for his work on President Abraham Lincoln and was President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, from 2010 to 2016.
Go to Profile#33095
Matthew Connelly
#33107
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Matthew James Connelly is an American professor of international and global history at Columbia University. His areas of expertise include the global Cold War, official secrecy, population control, decolonization, and methods to predict catastrophic threats. He is the author of Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population, A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria's Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era, The Declassification Engine: What History Reveals About America's Top Secrets, and articles on international and domestic politics for The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, The National Interest, and Le Monde.
Go to Profile#33096
Kevin Kiernan
#33108
Overall Influence
Kevin Kiernan is an American scholar of Anglo-Saxon literature. Kiernan is the editor of the Electronic Beowulf and an acknowledged expert on the Beowulf manuscript. Kiernan is the T. Marshall Hahn Sr. Professor of Arts and Sciences Emeritus at the University of Kentucky. He was inducted into the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame in 2015.
Go to Profile#33097
Leon Bankoff
#33109
Overall Influence
1908 - 1997 (89 years)
Leon Bankoff , born in New York City, New York, was an American dentist. As an amateur mathematician he constructed the Bankoff circle. He was also an Esperantist. Life After a visit to the City College of New York, Bankoff studied dentistry at New York University. Later, he moved to Los Angeles, California, where he taught at the University of Southern California; while there, he completed his studies. He practiced over 60 years as a dentist in Beverly Hills. Many of his patients were celebrities.
Go to Profile#33098
Ian Greer
#33110
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Professor Sir Ian Andrew Greer is a medical doctor who is the President and Vice Chancellor of Queen's University Belfast and formerly Vice-President of the University of Manchester and Dean of the Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences. He was Regius Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Glasgow 2001−2007, Dean at Hull York Medical School 2007–2010, then Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at the University of Liverpool 2010−2015.
Go to Profile#33099
Peter Shirley
#33111
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Peter Shirley is an American computer scientist and computer graphics researcher. He is a Distinguished Scientist at NVIDIA and adjunct professor at the University of Utah in computer science. He has made extensive contributions to interactive photorealistic rendering. His textbook, Fundamentals of Computer Graphics, is considered one of the leading introductory texts on computer graphics and is currently in the fourth edition.
Go to Profile#33100
Feridun Zaimoğlu
#33112
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Feridun Zaimoğlu is a German author and visual artist of Turkish descent. Since 1995 Zaimoğlu has become one of the important poets of contemporary German language. His central themes are the problems of the second and third generation of Turkish immigrants to Germany.
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